Monday, May 23, 2011

Dear Cousin: - Rec'd your letter and lovely get well cardwhich James was happy to receive. "Thankyou so much" for sending it. We are having a lot of winter, not so muchsnow and very light stuff. but awfully coldall time, surely eats the coal bin. We willbe glad to see spring in hopes James' willget to feeling better. Yes I hear from cousin Eural Bake oncein a while but can't be very helpful to himin genealogy which I'm sorry off. My son's mother.in.law passed away atSeattle Wash. this week she was 77. diedvery suddenly of a heart attack, so we'vebeen rather shocked around here aftergetting the news. Haven't seen Mabel for nearly two weeksthey have had bad colds so she hasn'tbeen down, have talked to her on the phonea couple of times. my older sister Annieis still in very poor health. she lives atProvo, Utah with her daughter. her grandsonis going on a mission soon as collegecloses in June. Must close again asJames doctor is knocking at the door "Love" from Lizzie.

Lizzie's husband, James Lusk Jones died a month later after writing this letter.

Friday, May 13, 2011

I have quite a few memories of times spent in my bedroom. Actually, I had 4 different bedrooms that I can remember.
I don't remember much about my first bedroom other than the crib that I slept in and the "throw the bottle on the floor" game that I used to play with mom.

Our first home was in Paris, Idaho. The crib that I slept in was brown and it had a teddy bear holding balloons on the outside of the headboard.

Mom would put me down for the dreaded nap with my favorite bottle. One day I remember dropping it on the floor and crying until she came in and picked it up for me. I love my naps today, but back then not so much. So I threw my bottle on purpose and waited for her to come back in. This went on three or four more times until she caught on.

I can still remember the feeling of teething which forced me to chew on the side of the crib. I remembered that there was a shot of the crib in some old home movies that were converted to vhs so I did a little experimenting. I recorded that section of the movie with my digital camera and then was able to make a still shot. Not the best quality, but it worked. Of course by this time sister was sleeping in the crib and we were in our next home on Mountain Dr in Pocatello, Idaho.

I didn't spend much time in that bedroom except for sleeping. It wasn't that big and by that time there was my first real bed and the crib in the same room. Therefore my naps were spent in mom and dad's room so sister could take a nap without me harassing her.

When we moved to Patsy Dr. in Pocatello I had to give my bed to brother and us girls got bunk beds. We used to throw blankets over the top bunk so they would hang down and hide the other bed turning it into a covered wagon. Someone would sit on top and drive the pretend horses and the others would be the passengers on the bottom and then someone would come in with a bandanna around their face and rob us.

Unfortunately we outgrew the bunk beds. When the Holiday Inn got rid of some of their beds we ended up with a couple of them. Mom used to work there. Sister and I had to share a bed then. I was only able to find one picture of the bedroom. It was Christmas day 1975.

As you can tell by the photo my preferred wall decor was posters of foxy guys that I got out of Tiger Beat magazine.

Let's see if I can remember them all: Donny Osmond, Tony Defranco, Shaun Cassidy, David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, Lief Garret, Wesley Eure, Robby Bensen, and of course John Travolta.

By this time, I spent a lot of time in my room alone listening to records and singing in to a hair brush (come on, I know you've done it too). When I was heartbroken I used to sing out the window hoping that somehow the one responsible would hear me (boy, what a fantasy world).

Finally, when I was a junior in high school I got my own room.

Daddy built a room in the basement just for me. It sure was nice of brother to help paint my bedroom.

I was real excited about getting my own room, but it's kind of creepy sleeping in a room with no windows.